Health Law and Regulation Update:

The Georgia Court of Appeals has held that a partner in a medical practice group, called as a corporate witness under Rule 30(b)(6), is not an “expert witness” such that their opinion testimony is automatically admissible into evidence. In Yugeros v. Robles, the plaintiff alleged that Dr. Yugeros failed to diagnose and treat a complication of plastic surgery. When the patient presented to the hospital, Dr. Yugeros did a workup, but did not order a CT scan.

During the lawsuit, Plaintiffs took the deposition of Dr. Yugeros’ partner, Dr. Alexander, as the corporate representative of the practice group pursuant to Rule 30(b)(6). During her deposition, Dr. Alexander testified the standard of care would be to order a CT scan. Plaintiffs asked for the representative familiar with the records to testify. However, Dr. Alexander had not realized Dr. Yugeros did not order a CT scan.

Prior to trial, Dr. Yugeros moved to exclude Dr. Alexander’s testimony. The trial court granted the motion. After going up to the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals held the trial court did not abuse its discretion in excluding the testimony because Plaintiffs failed to show that Dr. Alexander was qualified as an expert to opine on the standard of care. The reasoning was that, although Dr. Alexander was a corporate representative, to be admissible, her testimony still had to be otherwise admissible. Since standard of care testimony is expert testimony, the Plaintiffs bore the burden of qualifying her and they didn’t do so.

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